SEU PASTINHA

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Capoeira: mestre Pastinha comes to treat himself in São PauloÚltima Hora19th March 1971

Vicente Ferreira Pastinha, who was one of the most famous capoeira masters of Bahia, is today, at 86 years of age, in a situation that makes you hurt: blind, sick, living in a room where only his single bed fits, on the Pelourinho Square, in Salvador.

The description of the state in which Pastinha is was made by Reinaldo Suassuna, the student of mestre Bimba, who, sympathizing with what he saw on his recent trip to the bahian capital, decided to do something for the old capoeira master. He got together a group of friends to pay for Pastinha's trip to São Paulo, to cure himself.

OPERATION

The cost of travel and lodging, in this capital, are not a problem. It will be shared between the bahians who have capoeira academies in São Paulo. The difficulty that they have is to get a hospital that would treat Pastinha free, because they don't have any means to handle the costs of admission, mainly to treat the cataract to give him his sight back.

Suassuna, in the face of this, decided to appeal to the new secretary of the State Tourism, mr. Pedro Magalhães Padilha, so that he would put in a good word with the management of the Hospital of the Clinics to get Pastinha admitted in that establishment, where the treatment and the operation would be easier.

WHY

In the appeal to the secretary of Tourism, Reinaldo Suassuna explains:

- Pastinha, same as mestre Bimba, are famous in Bahia. Until very recently they were excellent teachers of capoeira, that is part of our folklore, as a dace, although deep down it's a real brazilian sport. The capoeira academies of both of them attract tourists. Pastinha, for this, is closely connected to the tourism.

PENSION

Reinaldo Suassuna says that what made him make the decision to help Pastinha was the fact that no bahian authority is interested for his ordeal. The only this they did for him was to give him a pension of a hundred cruzeiros monthly, an amount which he considers ludicrous, taking into account the cost of life in Bahia, much more higher than in São Paulo.

- If the secretary of Tourism of São Paulo intercede to the HC and we would get the treatment and the operation of Pastinha, all of us, that know the difficult situation that he is in the end of his life, would be very happy and eternally greatful, the said in the end.

«I always had the hope that capoeira would gain its space, or better, it place, of what mestre Pastinha, when living, already spoke about. Before he died he told that he would die, but only in flesh and not in spirit and capoeira would continue. He told that he spoke to João Pequeno that he would die and that he should take care of it, of capoeira.»

M Boca Rica, 2003

«For me, Pastinha is one of the great characters of Bahian folklife.»

Jorge Amado, 1945

«Mestre Pastinha and his students would put the strap [of caxixi] around the little and the ring finger. He talks about this in his book, and it can be seen on the photographies taken in his Academy.»

Shaffer, 1977

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